Saturday, August 16, 2014

so last night, my all-time favourite drinking glass flew out of my hand and shattered all over the floor. it was a 16 oz tumbler of happiness. I use to have two, now I have none.

as I was cleaning up the shards and small pieces, I got to thinking about what a great mom I am. ha! let's be honest. if you follow me on social media, you know that I'm probably not the person you want dishing out parenting advice. there are many days when I feel like there isn't an adult in charge and that my 9 year old is the boss of all of us.

broken glass and parenting.

parenting really brings out the absolute best and worst in me. my kids strip me bare and poke sticks at the most vulnerable parts. and they don't do it because they hate me, but because I am a fallible human being, attempting to raise other fallible human beings. most days, I do my best. some days are quite awful. I try. oh, do I try. but we wound each other. with our words. our inaction. with our expectations. our pleasing. and quite often, I ask my sons to navigate around the broken, shattered glass laying all over the place. my hurts. my brokenness. my poor self-image. my disappointments.

as I was on my hands and knees picking up the big shards, I thought: these are the easy ones. jagged, easy to see, easy to pick up with care, easy to discard. but then came the rest. the small pieces. the ones that get stuck in the cracks of my floor. the ones that wound deeply when they're not avoided. as their mother, of course I am going to do everything possible to pick up, sweep, vacuum the heck out of...so they don't literally cut their feet when they walk through the living room. and it was at that point that I realized that I don't always do that with the metaphorical glass in my life. I'm not always protecting my kids from all of the baggage I walked into motherhood with.

I often make them walk on my broken glass.

I don't like to jump on the trampoline with them because things jiggle. I yell. a lot. I don't follow through with consequences. I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty. I compare myself. I make them walk on my broken glass.

it would be unrealistic to believe that I will never wound them. but I am going to pull out the broom and once again, begin the clean-up process. take care of those broken pieces. I've done a good job with the big ones, but those little pieces. they cut deeply. they leave lasting scars. they need to be gently and thoroughly cleaned up.

because I know without a doubt that when I start to care for myself, it can only be good for those little human beings that call me mom.

me, on a good day!

about me

I practice intentional poor grammar, get rock-star parking all the time, drink coffee like starbucks is going out of business and title all my posts with song titles.

come, pour yourself a cup, and join me in the general ramblings of my daily adventures and enjoy all the same pictures over and over and over again {some call it redundancy, I call it looping around to what matters}!